If You Look For Me, You Will Find Me (6 Minutes)

1:17And number two, usually people have questions. They say, "Oh really, where is that written?" So I can give them a book and show them, "Look, don't think that I said it. God said it. It's written in the book. I wasn't... Hashem didn't ask me for permission before He wrote these books." Baruch Haba, have a seat. So, When I treated Hashem with casualness and said that the business world was a dominating force in my life, eventually the time came for Hashem to come to me and wake me up. And a wake-up it was—seven years of fighting for my life. ...both health-wise, financial-wise, and everything else in between. The CD is behind you, the CD number one and CD number two, "From Wall Street to the Western Wall," tell the story. On CD number two, it's the first track. It is, Baruch Hashem, a very popular lecture, very motivating to a lot of people, but also has a lot of mussar and a lot of lessons we could all apply to our lives, whether it’s somebody fighting a health battle, somebody having problems with emunah, or somebody dealing with financial issues, or someone intermarried, and so on. The message is universal, offering insights and guidance that are applicable to various challenges one might face in life.

2:25It applies in so many different ways, because B'emet, Baruch Hashem, Hashem put us through a nice, specialized, customized gehinnom in this world, that we were able to experience many nice things. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu eventually had mercy on us, and He woke us up, and we saw the truth, and Baruch Hashem, you see us today. So, once I saw the truth, everything became meaningless. And that's the one thing people have a hard time understanding when they ask me, "Wait a minute, you're making so much money on Wall Street, you were doing this, you were doing that. Why don't you stay on Wall Street? Okay, be religious, keep Shabbat, keep mitzvot, but go back to making your two, three hundred thousand dollars a month. What are you doing? Why do you give lectures for free and live off of tzedakah?" Why? There are two reasons. The first reason is, when you really see the truth for exactly what it is, you see Hashem's Torah for exactly what it is, at least at my level, which is not very high, but from where I stand, from my perspective, everything is meaningless. All the money in the world is meaningless, all the desires in the world are meaningless, everything is meaningless.

3:38Yes, you still have to eat, you still have to drink, you still have to live in this world. But the world that I lived in, the financial world, the stock market, CNBC, Bloomberg, the fame, the fortune, all that stuff became officially meaningless overnight. Because it's material. Okay, so what am I going to do? Invest another 70 years into this money? and his fame, and the employees, and the friends, and the enemies, and the politics, and all of this stuff. For what? I can't take any of it. Eventually, every one of us is going to become dust. The worms are going to eat us. The maggots are going to take whatever is left. The real us, the neshama, goes to the real world. You can't take the money with you. You can't take the car with you. You can't take the apartment on the 35th floor for $3.5 million with you. You can't. It stays here. So I figured, what am I going to invest in this stuff that I can't take with me? So it became meaningless. The second reason is that, Baruch Hashem, each one of us has a gift. Hashem gave me a gift. He gave me the ability to speak and think a little bit differently. And I also like to argue. So these are a good combination for giving lectures.

4:51So Hashem, the way I looked at it, and my Rav told me this as well, both Rav Efraim from Yerushalayim and Rav Mizrahi, whom I'm sure many of you know, Hashem needs more Jews. Businessmen He has plenty. This doesn't mean that businessmen are bad, but Hashem needs businessmen to fund all of this. But we don't have enough people telling the truth. So, I threw my hat into the equation, and I hope that Hashem gives me siyata dishmaya to help people do teshuva. In the last couple of years, hundreds of people have been doing teshuva, converting, and doing all types of things. People that, mamash, came to me as atheists had Orthodox weddings eight months later. With mechitza, no mixed dancing, nothing, mamash, like a hundred percent, like a frum person. You would think this person is frum from birth. Other people converting, other people becoming much more religious. One guy wanted to force his wife to have an abortion. A few months later, Baruch Hashem, he's full-time in a kollel. Full-time in a kollel. It has nothing to do with me, though. It's not me. Don't think it's me. Don't give me the credit. It's all this Torah. You read it, you do the same thing.

6:00Same Torah, just that no one sees the whole Torah. You've just experienced another Torah class.